Multiple reports are appearing that Butler was not on the team plane from New England to the Super Bowl in Minneapolis because of an illness. Showing up a day late also meant he missed a day of practice. Then he also had a “rough” week of practice once he did get on the field and was late for several meetings. And he apparently missed curfew at least once, and had a meltdown with a member of the coaching staff.

UPDATE TO ADD LINKS:

Just spoke with Malcolm Butler on a number of topics, including his Super Bowl benching. He hasn’t spoken with Bill Belichick since they departed Minnesota but surmised why he didn’t play that night: pic.twitter.com/ccCsoCLnLj

#NFL#SuperBowl Patriots/Eagles – Bill Belichick benched Malcolm Butler due to arriving late to team hotel, was also found with possession of marijuana on Thursday evening. Belichick was “fed up” with these actions and took a bold stand. (Closed source)

My understanding is the benching of #Patriots CB Malcolm Butler happened because of a perfect storm of issues: Sickness, a rough week of practice, and a minor rule violation believed to be related to curfew. A complicated matter. pic.twitter.com/TmUJgkHpsZ

All of this resulted in Coach Bill Belichick deciding to sit him for the biggest game of the year. Was BB correct in sticking by the team rules? By all accounts he has very few team rules:

Be where you are when you are supposed to be there

Pay attention

Put the team first

Butler broke all of these rules.

If he was sick and showed up a day late in Minnesota how was he able to be out at night? Shouldn’t he have been resting? As a professional athlete he makes a lot of money and has a lot of off season time. He can go out when he wants during the off season. But the Super bowl is a business trip. Deciding to party rather than rest was putting himself above the team.

Why dress him if he wasn’t going to play? With multiple injuries and a shortage of bodies he was an emergency only player. If Rowe or Bademosi got knocked out of the game Butler probably would have played more.

I can’t remember if it was Rowe, Harmon or Bademosi who commented after the game that they had gotten more reps in practice along side Gilmore. But there was an answer from one of them talking about this. So it wasn’t a complete surprise that Butler’s playing time would be limited.

Belichick is looking at the long view. The reason they win so much and get to the Super Bowl is because they have discipline. The players buy-in or they are gone. Breaking the few rules they have results in consequences. Belichick is willing to stand by the rules even in the biggest game of the year.

He has consistently leaned on his “dependable” players. Not necessarily superstars but guys who will be there. It doesn’t mean they will be perfect but often others will support them and together the team will prevail. This is how Butler got into the SB v Seattle and made the game winning interception. He had proved to the coaches through practice time that he could be depended on.

Imagine if that game had turned out different, that the Seahhawks had handed off to Lynch and ultimately won the game. Many would have likely questioned why Butler was in the game.

Belichick’s view of the big picture, along with his attention to details, almost always pays off. He knows it will pay dividends in the long run. If he gave in he would eventually have no rules and chaos would reign (See Steelers). In the end this was not about Belichick’s ego or pride. It was about a team concept of supporting each other and enforcing the rules.

The fact that Belichick was willing to stand by the team rules in the biggest game of the year only proves to strengthen his credibility.

To be clear, the reality of the offense is not merely that Reimer dragged an athlete’s child into the fray. Or more accurately, the misdeed was not that the comment was more vulgar or offensive than the regular programming in general. How could it be? Both WEEI and WBZ-FM (98.5 The Sports Hub) regularly use disgusting vernacular everyday to describe those in the news.

This one “sucks,” that one “blows,” someone else is “an a-hole.” This is the daily currency in which these outlets trade. It’s not even new.

WEEI regularly allows Barstool’s gutter residing David Portnoy to be a guest across their platforms. In 2011 Portnoy infamously published a photo of Brady’s then-toddler son naked on a beach beneath the headline, “Check out the howitzer on Brady’s kid.”

Portnoy was “banned” from the station for a while but is back pushing his locker room trash on the public airwaves. And don’t think the station won’t weigh ratings vs fallout again and bring Reimer back at some point.

The real offense here is that one of WEEI’s prime attractions, Brady and the Patriots, has signaled that the relationship, at least his weekly appearance, is threatened by the behavior of the radio host.

Today’s shows were awash in the irony of Minihane, Ordway, Merloni and others lamenting how Reimer went too far in commenting on the child. But Reimer’s comment itself was nowhere near the typical vulgar and abusive regular talk that is a staple of the abovementioned broadcasters but is also matched by 98.5’s Felger, Mazzarotti, T&R and many others.

Yet these hypocrites were all “shocked” in the same way Captain Renault was in the gambling at Rick’s Americain Cafe in “Casablanca.”

The best outcome from this incident would be a retreat of the potty mouths back towards a more genteel sports talk environment on Boston radio.

We urge the United States government, and others, to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We support reasonable and cost-effective environmental protection. But carbon dioxide, the target of the UNFCCC is not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on Earth. Observations since the UNFCCC was written 25 years ago show that warming from increased atmospheric CO2 will be benign — much less than initial model predictions.

We were in the middle of math class, so I gathered up a group of kids and asked Anders if he minded working in the hall with them. He readily agreed, and off they went. It wasn’t until math was almost over that I realized that his group was still in the hallway. When I peeked out there to see what was going on, I saw an amazing sight: Anders was on the floor, surrounded by these little third-graders, intently working on their math activities. Not one child was goofing off, everyone was very engaged and they were almost finished with the whole assignment! It was then that I knew there was something special about Anders.

Amid the debate, Rubio gave a lengthy speech. “We have become a society incapable of having debates anymore,” he said, adding figures in both parties, himself included, have engaged in heated rhetoric.